Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Ezhimala academy churns out officer-engineers for an expanding navy

By Ajai Shukla

Ezhimala, Kerala

Business Standard, 29 Sept 15

A five-kilometre beachfront crescent of
sparkling white sand. Dappled sunlight on the water of the bay broken
periodically by leaping dolphins. Backwaters lined with coconut palms. While this
sounds like a tourist resort, it is in fact the Indian Naval Academy (INA) at
Ezhimala (pronounced Erhi-mala), where a demanding four-year syllabus transforms
youths into the naval officers who man the country’s warships.

As the warship fleet expands, so does the
need for more officers. When India’s newest destroyer, INS Kochi, enters
service on Wednesday, the navy will be authorised an additional 40 officers and
350 sailors --- the vessel’s authorised crew.

By 2027, when the current 152-warship navy
(including 15 submarines) reaches its planned level of 198 warships, the navy
will need 13,700 officers. That is 30 per cent more than the 10,600 officers
authorised today (the navy actually makes do with barely 9,000). To train so
many officers, the INA will double its capacity from the current 1,300 cadets
to 2,700 cadets.

“We have the job of ensuring the navy’s officer
numbers increase in step with its equipment holdings”, explains Vice Admiral Ajit
Kumar P, the INA commandant.

The INA’s scenic campus is also geared to train
80 foreign cadets from countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius,
Seychelles, Tanzania and Namibia, who regard India as the region’s predominant
naval power. The navy regards training as an important component of naval
diplomacy in the Indian Ocean.

Until 1985, when a much smaller navy required
fewer officers, cadets were trained at a smaller establishment at Kochi. That
year, training shifted to INS Mandovi, Goa. In 2009, the then prime minister, Manmohan
Singh, inaugurated INA Ezhimala. Now, every single naval officer passes through
this academy.

Located 35 kilometres from the north Kerala
city of Kannur (formerly Cannanore), Ezhimala is steeped in India’s maritime
history. Mount Dilli, rising sharply from the sea to an altitude of 260 metres,
was a traditional navigational landmark for Arab traders sailing their dhows to
India. History records that Vasco da Gama, the first European to voyage to
India in 1498, landed in Calicut. In fact, many historians agree that accounts
of his landfall after crossing the Arabian Sea indicate he landed first at
Mount Dilli, before sailing onwards to Calicut.

Presently, the INA is a major presence at
Ezhimala. At a cost of Rs 800 crore, Phase I of the project has built capacity
for training 750 naval cadets. Phase II, which has been allocated another Rs
340 crore, will boost the capacity to 1,200 cadets. In fact, a desperate need
for more officers means that 1,300 naval cadets are already training here, with
infrastructure struggling to catch up.

Rear Admiral MA Hampiholi, the navy’s
assistant chief of personnel, explains that a shortfall of training capacity
forces the navy to make do with 13 per cent less officers than it is
authorised, 18 per cent less sailors and 26 per cent less civilians. Expanding Ezhimala is essential for making up officer
numbers.

“Creating officers
requires a gestation period. For example, the indigenous aircraft carrier, INS
Vikrant, will be commissioned in 2018. But we need sanctions for those officers
now so that they are available in 2018”, explains Hampiholi.

If producing so many officers were not
difficult enough, the navy has taken on the extraordinary challenge of training
all its cadets as engineering graduates. Ezhimala has an academic affiliation
with Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, for granting cadets a B.Tech degree
after four years of study, which is recognised by the All India Council for
Technical Education (AICTE).

Naval cadets from the tri-service National
Defence Academy, who must follow three years training at Khadakvasla,
Maharashtra, with a year of specialist naval training at Ezhimala, must do an
additional year of distance education for their M.Sc. degrees in applied sciences.

“To ensure that our cadets can cope with
this tough combination of academics, physical training and specialist naval
subjects, the navy has taken up with the Union Public Services Commission for
an eligibility cut-off of 70 per cent marks in candidates’ 10 + 2 examinations.
This would make joining the navy academically tougher than joining the air
force or army”, says Ajit Kumar.

2 comments:

Ezhimala is a picturesque place and probably the best suited for the Naval Academy. The need for engineers to be in the executive branch was realised more than 15 years ago and today it has become a reality which is modeled on the US Navy. I wonder what happens to the non engineer cadets of the Navy branch who come out of NDA?